Kicking Robots

Humanoids and the tech-­industry hype machine.

You can learn a surprising amount by kicking things. It’s an epistemological method you often see deployed by small children, who target furniture, pets, and their peers in the hope of answering important questions about the world. Questions like “How solid is this thing?” and “Can I knock it over?” and “If I kick it, will it kick me back?”

Kicking robots is something of a pastime among roboticists. Although the activity generates anxiety for lay observers prone to worrying about the prospect of future retribution, it also happens to be an efficient method of testing a machine’s balance. In recent years, as robots have become increasingly sophisticated, their makers have gone from kicking them to shoving them, tripping them, and even hitting them with folding chairs. It may seem gratuitous, but as with Dr. Johnson’s infamous response to Bishop Berkeley’s doctrine of immaterialism, there’s something grounding about applying the boot. It helps separate what’s real from what’s not.

All of this is going through my head in April, when I find myself face-to-face with a robot named Apollo. Apollo is a humanoid: a robot with two arms and two legs, standing five feet eight inches tall, with exposed wires, whirring motors, and a smooth plastic head resembling a mannequin’s. Like so many humanoids, Apollo exemplifies the uncanny, hyperreal nature of modern robotics, simultaneously an image from science fiction and a real, tangible machine.

Robots like Apollo are seemingly everywhere these days. There are headlines about Chinese bots running half marathons, ominous videos of muscled humanoids twitching on gantries, clips of robot fight clubs. Sometimes you get the feeling that these machines constitute a fifth column of sorts—a not-so-secret cell, growing in number, biding its time, preparing for the uprising. Economists are looking forward to it. Around the world, they point out, population growth is slowing and labor shortages are spreading. Without humanoids to step into the breach, and quickly, the global economy could descend into chaos. Bank of America forecasts that there will be at least a million humanoid robots shipped annually by 2035, while Morgan Stanley predicts that more than a billion will be in use by 2050. If all goes according to plan, robotics could constitute the largest industry in the world, generating annual revenue upwards of $5 trillion. Elon Musk, that sage of understatement, claims that Tesla’s own Optimus robot will one day “be more productive than the entire global economy.”

Apollo’s creator, the U.S. startup Apptronik, is a frontrunner in this emerging industry. The company says it’s building the first general-purpose commercial robot, a machine that will one day be able to take on any type of physical labor currently performed by humans, whether cleaning houses or assembling cars. Not knowing what to believe from what I’ve seen on social media, I’ve traveled from London to Austin, Texas, to see Apollo for myself. Against prophecies of doom and salvation, “stability testing” seems like a crude way to gauge the technology’s development, but it’s a good place to start.

As I square up to Apollo in a plexiglass arena, my first instinct is, naturally, to raise a foot. But the kick test is too dangerous for visiting journalists, I’m told. Instead, someone hands me a wooden pole with a piece of foam taped around one end and mimes poking the machine in its chest. Ah, I think, the scientific method. In front of me, as various motors rev up to speed, the robot shuffles in place, looking like an arthritic boxer readying for a fight. On the other side of the plexiglass, a group of engineers chat casually with one another and glance over at a bank of monitors. One of them gives me a thumbs-up. Have at it.

My first shove is hesitant. I’ve been told that the prototype in front of me is worth around $250,000, and while breaking it would make for a good story, it would also be the end of my visit to Apptronik. In response to my prod, the bot merely teeters. It’s heavier than I’d expected, around 160 pounds. It feels, well, like a person. “Oh, you can do it harder than that,” says an engineer, and I jab forward again. Nothing. Apollo is still trotting on the spot. Fine, I think, I’ll give it a real push. Drawing back, I grip my makeshift spear and strike the robot hard in the chest. It staggers backward, stamping its feet, flinging its arms toward me in an appealingly human gesture. I’m struck by a flash of involuntary alarm, whether out of sympathy for a fellow being or fear of an expensive accident I can’t say. For a moment, the robot looks like it might fall, then regains its balance and returns to its position in front of me. I look at its blank face with wonder and disquiet. It seems pretty real to me. (...)

In my conversation with Cardenas, we discussed the different ways robots already work alongside us. When I was catching my flight to Texas, for instance, I watched a floor-cleaning machine the size of a garbage bin sweep through Heathrow Airport. An older couple stopped and pointed as it trundled past, but most travelers ignored it. Then, after landing in Austin, I walked past a “robot barista” making coffee. The operation was pure spectacle: the robot was just a mechanical arm that held a cup underneath the nozzle of a machine. Here, I thought, are the two strands of robotics: one useful and invisible, the other theatrical and redundant.

There is a basic challenge in robotic design that I’ve come across time and time again. I refer to it as the dishwasher problem. It’s like this: Imagine you’re designing a robot to clean and dry dishes the way a human does. Think of all the difficulties you need to overcome: Your robot needs hands and arms that can manipulate items of different shapes and sizes, and a vision system to identify muck and grime. It needs to be strong enough to grasp slippery things, sensitive enough to handle breakables, and dexterous enough to clean the insides of items like mugs and graters. Alternatively, you could build a waterproof box, fill it with jets and sprays, and stuff everything inside. That’s a much simpler way to tackle the problem, and one that has gifted humanity the dishwasher.

Criticism of humanoids within the robotics industry often follows a similar logic. Why go to all the trouble of mimicking nature’s blueprints when our own designs can do the job more efficiently? We don’t make planes that fly by flapping their wings or ships that wriggle through the water like tuna. So why make things harder for ourselves?

by James Vincent, Harper's |  Read more:

Images: Spencer Lowell
[ed. I imagine if you can outfit them with hundreds of sensors they might have a good shot at helping with this problem: We won’t see AGI in our lifetime (TCA):]

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"This lack of understanding brings us to the biggest barrier to AGI: the problem of embodiment. Human intelligence is deeply rooted in our physical interactions with the world. You can explain to a person what ‘heavy’ means, but they won’t understand it until they have struggled to lift a rock. Current AI systems are just text processors in server farms, severed from the feedback loops of real life, and without a body to experience gravity, friction, or the passage of time, an AI lacks the grounding required for true common sense. It can describe a thing, but it cannot know the thing. Unless we solve the massive engineering problem of giving these systems a physical form that can navigate the world, they will remain idiot savants, capable of passing tests but unable to make a cup of coffee in a messy kitchen."